The first few days, we didn't have a car so we did almost all of our grocery/furniture (2 small bookshelves from Zellers) shopping by walking or taking a bus. We only had to take a taxi once -- to pick up a kitchen table set from Wal-Mart. We also ordered a couch and a bed. We built the furniture while waiting for the delivery people.
On August 4, we were surprised to learn that our car was ready for pickup! Way faster than expected. Turns out that my old supervisor at Chrysler made some phone calls to help us out.
My parents arrived in Kingston on the evening of the fifth. They made it all the way here in only 6 days, with only my dad driving! They had rented a huge van from National which easily carried the other half of our stuff. In fact, it could have fit everything from our car as well. Apparently, with National's membership card (free), they got the one-way rental (drop off in Toronto) for a week for only $1000. Take note, anyone who may want to do this in the future! We took my parents out for a late dinner at (in our opinion) the best pizza place downtown. They bake the individual sized pizzas in a big stone oven. Very tasty. We went there on our first visit to Kingston and twice on our second visit in June to find apartments.
The next day, my parents took us to Toronto to go to IKEA. We had stuff picked out online while we were still on the trip and floor plans of our apartment to make sure things fit. We got very delayed in traffic, had a late dim sum lunch and dropped off some things for my friend who will be moving to Toronto later this month. We then spent four hours and a large portion of our furniture budget at IKEA. In total, we ended buying 13 pieces of furniture as well as cart-full of little items like cutting boards, etc. We completely filled up the van (less space since Laura and I also had to be there). We dropped by my aunt's place in Toronto quickly before heading back to Kingston. We got back really late -- 11pm. We unloaded the van and moved all the stuff up to our apartment as quietly as we could and my parents drove back to Toronto despite our protests. They needed to be back in Toronto that night for logistics reasons and didn't arrive until 3am!!
During the following week, my parents visited a ton of friends and family in the Toronto area, some they haven't seen for a very long time. Meanwhile, Laura and I built IKEA furniture for several days. The daily schedule was to build something in the morning, have lunch, then go out to buy whatever remaining things/groceries that we forget (to avoid the hottest part of the day since we had no fan yet), make/eat dinner, then build a couple more things. It took us about 4 days to finish everything. We did really well on most items! We made a couple of mistakes but we either found a way to fix it, found spare parts from another piece, or the problem did not seem to affect the integrity of the item (we hope!!). We had superglue on hand as a backup but we only had to use it on one set of shelves.
We even tried some bubble tea at a "fusion" place near the University/downtown and while the milk tea wasn't very good, the green tea bubble tea was great. It was almost Vancouver-quality, but the tapioca was a bit hard. Choices were limited though, it was only black tea, green tea, or milk tea with standard fruit flavours. No slushies or pudding or jellies!
My parents returned to Kingston on Friday August 13 with a supply of asian foods that we couldn't get in Kingston (or were much overpriced here), especially a nice rice cooker. Some items, such as our fan, were donated by my aunt and uncle (they had extra fans when they switched to air conditioners). My awesome parents also picked up a bike from a fellow UBC graduate doing a summer NSERC in Toronto. It will be useful until the snow/ice/cold comes and especially next summer since our Queen's bus pass only works September to April. On Saturday, my parents took us to Costco (they had a membership) and we got a lot of supplies. Costco had a referral program going on so we also got our own membership and some Costco Cash Cards, which basically means a cheaper membership. We probably won't be able to go to Costco much since it's really big stuff for only the two of us but with the referral deal and some items such as bottled water we should be able to get what we paid for membership back at least. They sell gift cards to a good restaurant downtown -- you can buy two $50 gift cards for $80. So that's pretty good.
Afterwards, we drove about 30 km east of town to Ganonoque and went on a short cruise tour of the Thousand Islands with my parents. The islands and cottages were very pretty! We looked some of them up -- some of them are selling for 18 million dollars (the cottages, not the land)!! Apparently, back in the day, when the government "leased" the land from the aboriginal peoples, it took them about 50 years to finally sell off all the islands to interested buyers. Some of the islands sold for only one or two dollars. Also, according to the tour, some of the cottages/islands are still inhabited by the same family that originally bought these islands. Photos at the end.
The next morning, we had breakfast with my parents before they drove back to Toronto to catch a flight home. The last two weeks of August were much more relaxing. We had our internet and TV set up about mid-month as well as an indoor parking spot. We shopped around for auto insurance, finally finding one that recognized our safe driving experience instead of charging us higher premiums for being young/male. We also spent the equivalent of a full day waiting in line-ups at various ServiceOntario offices to get our OHIP, driver license, and vehicle registration. And, we officially changed all our addresses to Ontario!
Laura's birthday was also in August and we celebrated with lunch at our favourite pizza place and dinner at Red Lobster. It was also a nice break for me since I didn't have to cook that day, for once! Oh, and we also picked up ice cream log cake from Dairy Queen. It lasted us for over a week! Laura's birthday present from me was the complete box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Amazon said 1-3 days but it turned out to take something like 10 days!
We did go back to Toronto one day at the end of August to visit Jen, a friend from UBC who was in Toronto for a summer project. We took the opportunity to go to T&T to pick up some food we can't get here and to also finish our original trip properly. It was fun to drive over the hill that killed our car last time and make it into Kingston properly!
So far, we really enjoy living in Kingston. We are very happy with our apartment and we love the atmosphere of the city. We don't really like big crowded places so Kingston is nice and small but it's still big enough to have almost everything we need (except Asian foods). There is a huge shopping plaza that is even bigger than Ironwood in Richmond and has pretty much every store that exists in Richmond. The mall has the 3 major department stores (Sears, Zellers, the Bay) and many smaller shops that we recognize. There are also some extra things like an outdoor movie theatre that shows a movie in front of City Hall every Thursday night in the summer (just bring a chair -- but we don't have any chairs that we can take!) and outdoor skating in the winter. I am looking forward to our time in Kingston!
My parents took a boat tour of the Thousand Islands with us.
An interesting cottage on one of the ~1800 islands.
This island/cottage was my favourite out of the ones we saw that day!
you guys should definitely post up pictures of ur new home! sounds like you guys are having lots of fun! Best of luck with the upcoming marriage!
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